The Books of Payments II: Bonds, Debts and Memoranda

All the surviving books 1495-1521 contain one or more discrete sections following on from the register of payments, which was always the largest single element within the books.  The additional divisions of the books were originally named and identified by protruding “bookmark” tags, many of which have been removed in the course of later rebinding, leaving only a glue outline on the page.[52] The bookmarks facilitated the use of the books by Heron, his clerks, and, to at least 1509, by the king. They are contemporaneous with the books, since entries occasionally overspill on to the tabs.[53]  The various sections do not always appear in the same order within the books, nor is any section necessarily a continual feature throughout the series (Fig. 1).[54]   The nature of the content recorded in any one section might also change over time.  A debt was always a debt.  But the section titled Memoranda included entries concerning potential revenue and past omissions and derelictions, matters of high policy or requiring executive action, auctions of grants of office and favour, the deposit of records with John Heron for safe-keeping in the Jewel House, and the occasional matter that seems too slight to command the attention of a king.  A Recognisance was consistent in that it almost always bound other guarantors in addition to the principal party for the performance of the thing or money required: but what that thing was, or what that payment was for, changed out of all recognition over time.[55] Whereas the earlier recognisances are more overtly varied, those entered in the books from 1509 are entirely recognisances for loans, a trend already apparent before Henry VII’s death. The first series included bonds given for proper conduct in office, or to do or not to do a certain thing, or for allegiance to the king.  In all these instances the stated penalty would only become payable if the terms of the recognisance were breached.  Others were primarily arrangements to pay, either for the price of the king’s favour or in discharge of a fine; latterly others again were indeed for loans: some for the king’s engagement in continental money markets, and others to be put to use in the Mediterranean trade, the export being wool and the import wine, rich fabrics, alum, and other desired goods which, it was hoped, would lead to an expansion in his customs revenues.  Many of the post-1509 recognisances are more opaque.  They included loans to consortia of Italian merchants to be used in the money markets and in the Mediterranean trade, and advances that in an earlier age would have been called prests, requiring a final account, for the purchase of arms and victuals for the king’s wars.  One of the most striking and enormous debts, for which the recognisances were several times renegotiated, was for the repayment to Henry VIII of the dowry originally given to the king’s sister Mary for her marriage to Louis XII of France.  Repayment was the price of her marriage to Charles Brandon after Louis’s death.[56]

Figure 1: Books of Payments: the Named Divisions of the Books

1. BL, Add MS 21480 ‘Payments’ has only running totals and quarterly totals to 29 April 1505, copied from E101/415/3 and BL, Add MS 59899.  Then individual payments as BL Add MS 59899.
2. Initially included as a section in 1509 but then abandoned.  One entry for December 1509 remains in TNA, E36/215, p. 293.  The previous leaf, carrying the entries from May 1509 and the section bookmark, was cut out, as noted by the scribe of the volume.  The entire section is lost from the master ledger, BL, Add. MS 21481.
3. Bookmark in BL MS Add. 21481 fo. 289 ‘Recoignisaunces for lone money’.  The section signature at the foot of the same page is ‘Lone money’.
4. Notes on foreign coinage delivered: in hand of Henry VII (fo. 1r); subsidiary document(s) Repayments 1495-97 of money borrowed by the Queen (fos. 105r-106r)
5. Subsidiary document(s): clerk’s memorandum to search for information concerning Richmond friary (fo. 80r(4))
6. Subsidiary document(s): acknowledgement in hand of Elizabeth of York of days of repayment of money loaned to her (fo. 250r); annotated memorandum concerning arrears on a clerical tenth, diocese of Exeter (fo. 225r)
7. Aphorism in hand of scribe (fo. 333v)
8. Subsidiary document(s): Copy warrant concerning gold coin to be transferred to Calais for the wars (BL, Add MS 21481, fos. 347r-348v; cf. E101/413/2/3).  TNA, E36/215 makes reference to the warrant, citing a folio number that is nonsense in context, since it applies only to the master ledger.
9. Index is only in BL, Add MS 21481

The books 1495-1509 all include sections titled for Wards and for Liveries.  Since the entries are not individually dated, it is not clear whether they are represent pieces of information which could be used to trigger administrative action directed out of Chancery, or whether they are derived from inquisitions already taken, although the latter is more likely.  Either way, they represent future revenues that could be exploited to the Crown’s profit by the sale of the ward and marriage of an heir who was still a minor, and, in the case of Livery, a composition for entry into lands held in chief.  The same headings do occur after 1509 – but only as sub-groups within the larger body of Obligations. This was because a sale or composition had been agreed, and in consequence an arrangement made for payment into the Chamber, either as a lump sum or more usually by instalments.  The entries were no longer agenda items, that is things ‘to be done’. The alteration reflects administrative change beyond the Chamber, with the gradual development of a separate court of Wards and Liveries, a process that began in 1504 but had even earlier roots. 

Memoranda disappeared as a discrete section in 1505, when the king delegated specific responsibilities to named councillors whilst retaining ultimate oversight. The Memoranda are perhaps best seen as a disparate agenda of things, great and small, that Henry VII wished to keep in mind, based both on observed necessity and on information reaching him.  Some, perhaps all, of the entries were dictated to Heron by the king.  Some, but certainly not all, were dealt with, either by executive action or, where appropriate, by a financial composition with the king, leading to an obligation or recognisance setting out the terms and dates of expected payment.  Unless paid immediately in full, an abstract of the written instruments would then be entered in the appropriate section of the book(s).  

The lists of lands in the king’s hands likewise disappeared from the books after 1505.  The section had been made redundant.  Sir Robert Southwell and Roger Leyborne assumed oversight of audit, in an arrangement that was the precursor to the Court of General Surveyors.  A summary of revenues arising was presented to the king in the form of declared accounts.  Whilst some revenues went into the Exchequer, most were paid over to John Heron for the king’s use.  Against each such transfer of funds Henry VII noted in his own hand that Heron had rendered account.[57] Recognisances as a section disappeared after 1509.  The same instrument, with very different motivation, had expanded from its earlier periodic use by Henry VII’s reign, to become an identifiable section, Recognisances for Loans, branching off from the general run of Recognisances, in Henry VII’s last years, and finally a discrete and significant register within the books after May 1509. And whilst John Heron expected the book opened in May 1509 to contain sections dedicated to tallies and to debts, as had been his practice for the past fifteen years or so, historic information about debts entered in the books prior to Henry VII’s death was almost immediately subject to review, and many (but not all) debts were cancelled.[58] In the event, neither category was retained as a themed division, and the pages initially reserved for those entries were used as overspill to continue the record of payments. [59]  This was also the fate of the division intended for loans to the Cofferer.  The scribe of the copy ledger noted that the first leaf, including the ‘labell’ had been cut out, leaving only a stub.  Those two pages must have been fully written, since the following and still extant page includes an entry for 1 December 1509.[60]  The section is completely missing from the master ledger, and the entry of payments (for 1514) continues uninterrupted.[61]

Over the course of the whole accounting period represented by any one book, the entries in these sections were heavily annotated.  Often the notes, heavily abbreviated, are of staged payments, identifying the date and amount of money paid into the chamber against the outstanding debt.  Other notes cancel an entry, sometimes with further explanatory detail; record its registration in another part of the book; indicate executive action, or that the accumulated payments by instalment balanced the amount due.[62] In the left hand margin notes of cancellation (most usually vac[at]), or of the complete discharge of an outstanding sum (sol[utum] = paid), both being words written in a larger script, predominate.  The entries of “sol’ “were often, but not always, batched.  They are likely to be part of the audit process, but assisted also in the preparation of the books for copying.  Heron kept a running note that he had checked a page and, at the end of each section, that the relevant entries had been copied over to a new book.  It was not a simple process.  It was important at the time. It needs to be understood even today if the books are to be used accurately.  The clerks and, if infrequently, John Heron, got it wrong from time to time.  The layering of marginalia over time, and necessary alterations to the wording used in the entry itself, made the copying process a trap for the unwary.  Cancelled entries, and those in which full payment had been made, were not copied over.  A visual line of cancellation sometimes reinforced the message.  Entries on which no action had occurred could be copied as they stood.  They were still valid: memoranda in their broadest sense.  The remainder required adjustment.  Debts that had only been partially paid off had to be to recalculated to show the ‘remain’, the amount still outstanding. It is this revised sum, reached after deducting monies already paid, that would be entered in the right hand column of the new book.  If instalments were originally spread over several years, then the new book would usually record only the number of years left.  A payment due at ‘Michaelmas next’, or Michaelmas in a named year that was also the commencing year of the new book, would be reworded to become, once copied over, ‘this Michaelmas’.  There might be other minor changes to the wording, not least if an entry originally in one section of the book had been transferred to another.  In the new book immediately following, all such copied material would be entered under the date of 1 October: although in 1497, a year twice disrupted by dangerous rebellion, both audit and the copying process began early and urgently, and the copied material is dated 1 August.[63]  In 1495 and in 1497 the copying clerk was John Heron himself.  Thereafter the task was delegated to one of the junior clerks of the office, offering in the new book an easy visual clue to the point at which the copied material ends, and new material begins. It is a process that means that a single entry may appear, in a form slightly altered from its first point of origin, in more than one book and in more than one place within a single book.  It is also a process that might suggest a tentative and very partial reconstruction of back sections of the lost book for 1491-1495.  Almost certainly, those sections would have included all the elements present in the book of 1495-1497.  However, because the scribe of October 1495 appears to be John Heron throughout, the visual signals that distinguish between material copied, and material added, are not clear-cut.  Even given that entries dealt with in full would not be carried over, it seems unlikely that this additional material was introduced into the books before 1494 or early 1495.  That the lost book included material additional to the payments could of course be an illusion: but that too cannot simply be assumed. The section titled Recognisances was not present in 1495-1497 but appears fully formed in the book for 1497-1499.  ‘Cofferer’ was, however, an afterthought in that same book.  On 1 July 1499 Heron abstracted the essential details of an of agreement of 17 June 1499 establishing a regular cycle of loans to the Cofferer of the king’s household, and the arrangements for repayment of the loan.  It was entered on to a blank page facing the first of the regular supplementary sections.  When, just a few weeks later, John Heron prepared the next ledger, that for 1499-1502, ‘Cofferer’ appears as a regular section and was bookmarked accordingly.[64]  Two things, however, seem fairly certain from the perspective of 1495.  One is that that the use of the ledgers as a treasure chest of things that the king wished to memorialise was fairly new.  The second is that John Heron did not, indeed could not, foresee how much this aspect of his work would expand.  When he prepared the book 1495-7 for active use, he seriously underestimated how much space would be required for the register of Obligations and of Memoranda. In consequence, he had to accommodate the overspill in blank pages left between the ‘Payments’ and the ‘Revenues’ section that commenced the back matter contained in the book.  The result is that the overspill of Obligations now reads backwards from Michaelmas 1496, whilst the Memoranda overspill more conventionally reads forwards with room to spare.[65]  Heron did not make the same mistake again.